
'/ 



The Dead Lands 
of Europe 



D 525 

H4 
Copy 1 



By 

J. W. HEAD LAM 



NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS IN AMERICA FOR HODDER & STOUGHTON 






H4 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Dead Lands of Europe 5 

II Poland 9 

III Bohemia 13 

IV Roumania and the Southern Slavs . . .19 
V South Slavs and Central Europe ... 22 

VI Austria 27 



THE DEAD LANDS OF 
EUROPE 

I 

THE DEAD LANDS OF ETJEOPE 

Across the continent of Africa, from the Red Sea to 
Cape Verde, for nearly 4000 miles, there lies a desert band 
of death and desolation. Across the continent of Europe, 
from the Baltic to the Adriatic, there runs a similar band 
of death — not physical but national, states, nations, and 
peoples broken up, wrecked, and destroyed — for more 
than 1000 miles. The traveller finds his way up great 
rivers such as the Vistula, destined to be the highway of 
a nation, over the mountains and forests of the Carpa- 
thians, down to the valley of the Danube and the shores 
of the Adriatic — a country well adapted by the bless- 
ings of nature to take its place among the great centres 
of national life and civilisation. But throughout his 
journey he will find himself among men who are de- 
prived of those primary rights of national existence 
and self-government which others enjoy; throughout 
the whole course of his journey he will find himself 
among those whose nation, whose tongue, often whose 
religion, is unrecognised and oppressed. If, in the 
course of his journey, he looked on a map and asked 
in what country he was, he would find that it is now 
Prussia, now Russia, now Austria; but if he asked the 
men among whom he found himself they would give a 
different answer — they would tell him that they are 
Poles, that they are Czechs, that they are Roumanians, 
that they are South Slavs. But the statesmen and the 

5 



6 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE 

diplomatists and the rulers of the country would tell 
him, e.g., that there is no such country as Poland, that 
they are the Polish subjects of the King of Prussia, the 
Emperor of Austria, or (till a few weeks ago) Polish 
subjects of the uzar of all the Russias. 

Have any of my readers ever thought what this means ? 
The United States of America have been founded to 
maintain the principle of government of the people by 
the people for the people. There may be populations 
so ignorant and untrained in political matters that they 
are unable to profit by a complete system of democratic 
government, and they may require a transition stage in 
which the government is in strong hands; but there is 
no nation so ignorant that it does not require that its 
own prosperity should be the first object of its rulers, 
and no nation which does not demand complete and full 
recognition of its own customs, of its own language, and 
of its own religion. Have you ever considered what it 
means that the peasant when he goes into a Court of 
Justice is allowed at the best only on sufferance to use 
his own language ; that the schools to which his children 
are sent may be used to destroy in them the remembrance 
of the great deeds of their own ancestors and to substi- 
tute for them the language and the traditions of an alien 
and conquering race ? You know something of what the 
English nation suffered under the rule of the Norman 
Conquerors. That which at this moment is being en- 
dured in Eastern Europe is in many ways infinitely 
worse. The Normans never interfered in the home life 
of the English; they never called upon the English to 
go to war outside the bounds of the kingdom and to risk 
their lives in a quarrel which was not their own. What 
these nations have to meet is not merely the carelessness 
and indifference of a superior social class, but the steady, 
deliberate, and continued efforts of highly organised 
governments to obliterate from the earth the very mem- 
ory of their existence. 

That which these nations — the Poles, the Bohemians, 
the Southern Slavs — claim is in fact the right to exist, 



THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE 7 

the right to a full expression of their own nationality in 
literature, in art, in their internal government and in 
their international relations. One would have thought 
that the claim had only to be made for every one to ac- 
cede to it. Surely in political life the murder of a nation 
is the greatest of crimes. It is perhaps difficult for those 
who live many thousands of miles away in the Western 
World to understand, not the justice of the claim — for 
that must in truth be obvious to all — but the necessity 
for enforcing it. But the danger is no imaginary one. 
Of these Slavonic peoples some have in fact been crushed 
out of existence. The whole of Germany east of the 
Elbe was in former days inhabited by peoples whose 
very names have disappeared from Europe, and a hun- 
dred years ago it seemed as if the same fate had be- 
fallen the Bohemians and would befall the South Sla- 
vonic peoples. They were being slowly crushed by the 
predominance of their German neighbours, swamped by 
the immigration of German colonists, absorbed into the 
neighbouring German States. But for the last hundred 
years, and in fact since the time of the French Revolu- 
tion, a reaction against this process has taken place, and 
the question at issue, which should be determined by 
this war, is whether the forces of Germanisation or those 
of national reaction will be successful. 

In this great controversy, the greatest in its nature of 
which history has any record, we might well call on 
the Germans to bear testimony on our side. It would 
be well that they should in the days of their prosperity 
remember certain aspects of their past history. There 
was a time when Germany occupied relatively to France 
a position somewhat similar to that which these Sla- 
vonic states now occupy relatively to Germany. Ger- 
many at the beginning of the eighteenth century had no 
real political unity. Owing to political disunion and 
internal warfare it had lost its national self-conscious- 
ness ; it was divided between three Christian confessions 
and split up into hundreds of small principalities. To 
the west of them were the French, united under a pow- 



8 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE 

erful and aggressive ruler; their culture, their lan- 
guage, their institutions dominated Europe. Germany 
seemed indeed to have no message for the world. It 
was the highest ambition of their men of letters, states- 
men, courtiers, and kings to show themselves capable 
of imitating what they learned from their Western 
neighbours. The rest of the world was rapidly coming 
to look on at least Western Germany as an appendage 
of France. It was inconceivable that an ordinary man 
of science or letters or of affairs should trouble to learn 
German. German towns were known to the rest of 
Europe by their French names; to this day indeed we 
speak of Cologne and Mayence and Aix la Chapelle, 
not of Koln and Mainz and Aachen. The very memory 
of the great days of mediaeval Germany had been lost; 
the very existence, for instance, of the Niebelungenlied, 
now the treasured epic of the Germans, was not known. 
It might well look as though Germany was destined 
eventually to be absorbed into the superior Latin cul- 
ture, the German language to survive merely as the 
local dialect of the peasants; it was being relegated to 
the same position which English for a time held under 
the Norman Kings. 

And then the great change came. The German nation 
became again conscious of itself. By an unparalleled 
national effort they once more gained touch with their 
own past. A great school of German letters and Ger- 
man science was founded. German once more estab- 
lished itself as one of the essential elements in West- 
ern European culture, and this intellectual and spiritual 
revival was inevitably followed by the political regenera- 
tion of the country, for the Germans soon saw, and 
rightly saw, that the preservation and development of 
their own culture was impossible without political unity. 

What they did then is what these Slavonic races are 
doing now. They have for the last hundred years been 
recalling the great achievements of their own past ; they 
are giving expression in art, in learning, and in litera- 
ture to the thoughts and, aspirations which spring spon- 



POLAND 9 

taneously from them; they claim to be heard speaking 
in their own voice and not through the medium of Ger- 
many. They ask us to think of their own towns, not 
under the disguise of a foreign and German name, and 
they know that these aspirations cannot be fulfilled un- 
less they gain complete political self-government. It is 
indeed one of the true tragedies of history that the Ger- 
man nation had not the greatness of soul and the gener- 
osity of mind to extend to these nations, rightly strug- 
gling to be free, the sympathy and admiration which they 
have claimed for themselves. 



II 
POLAND 

Among those lands of which I spoke in my last chapter 
the first place must be assigned to Poland — Poland the 
Niobe of nations. Let us be frank. In the political 
world, among statesmen and diplomatists, the name of 
Poland calls up no pleasing recollections. How could it 
do so? For during the last three generations the word 
"Pole" has called to our minds exiles, men holding 
often precarious positions in foreign countries, full — as 
exiles will always be — of fantastic and unrealisable 
schemes, subterranean diplomacy, intrigues — and in- 
trigues directed as often against one another as against 
the common enemy of their race. And in their own coun- 
try in Eastern Europe the word "Poland" implied a 
problem — a problem to which there appeared to be no 
solution, for every solution must mean the complete 
overthrow of the established European system. It was 
to throw the apple of discord into the relations of kings 
and states — a problem which indeed could not be solved 
without a fundamental change, not only in the external 
relations, but the internal government of Russia, of 
Austria, of Prussia. 

It is the duty, and it is nearly always the object, of 



10 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE 

diplomatists to avoid war. In 1815, in 1830, in 1848, 
in 1863 the Polish question brought Europe to the verge 
of war, and since 1863 it is one on which the rulers of 
the world have deliberately and perhaps wisely been 
silent. But now things are changed; that great war 
which nearly all had striven to avoid has come, and is it 
not reasonable to hope that there may be secured from 
the ruin of the world at least the avoidance of the 
perpetuation of a state of things which would inevitably 
in the future bring about again a similar catastrophe? 
"When we speak of Poland we think of the Poland and 
the Poles whom we know ourselves — weak, helpless, di- 
vided. But let us remember that there was an older 
Poland, one which occupied in Europe a position among 
the greatest of monarchies. Five hundred years ago the 
Kings of Poland held a great place among the rulers of 
Europe. Two hundred and fifty years ago a Turkish 
army stood before the gates of Vienna. The great im- 
perial city, the guardian of Christendom and civilisa- 
tion, was beleaguered by the hosts of the infidel and 
the barbarian. If it fell, a flood of desolation would 
sweep over Central Europe. "Whence could help come? 
It came, and the saviour was John Sobieski, King of 
Poland. And the next Sunday, in the Cathedral of 
Vienna, the preacher took as his test, ' ' There was a man 
sent from God, and his name was John." But now 
there is no King of Poland ; there is no Poland. Fifty 
years ago Metternich said he had no knowledge of Italy 
— Italy was merely a geographical expression. Poland 
is not even a geographical expression. There are the 
Polish provinces of Prussia, there is Galicia, there is 
the district of the Vistula. Poland is dead, the mon- 
archy is gone ; you can see the jewels of the Polish crown 
preserved in a museum in a German city ; you can see the 
tombs of the kings and recall the past greatness of the 
kingdom in the churches at Cracow, the ancient capital. 
But Poland is rent asunder. It has been divided be- 
tween three great monarchies, by which its territory was 
surrounded ; but the memory of the crime has not been 



POLAND 11 

effaced in the history of Europe, and Europe will never 
be at peace or at rest until there has been reparation 
and restoration. The final judgment on it has been 
given by one of the participants. Maria Theresa of 
Austria wrote : ' ' When all my lands were invaded, and 
I knew not where in the world I should find a place to 
be brought to bed in, I relied on my good fight and 
the help of God. But in this thing, where not only pub- 
lic law cries to Heaven against us, but also all natural 
justice and sound reason, I must confess never in my 
life to have been in such trouble and am ashamed to 
show my face." 

The hour for which the world has waited so long has 
now come, and at last the diplomacy of Europe has 
mentioned the word Poland. The first word was spoken 
by the ruler of that country which has enjoyed for a 
hundred years the larger share of the booty. The Czar 
proclaimed that Poland should be restored, and his 
Allies have taken note of the words and embodied this 
in their proposals for terms of peace. It is a word which 
has not been lightly spoken and cannot be recalled. The 
President of the United States has also taken note of 
it and has specifically stated that an autonomous and 
independent Poland must be a part of any new system 
to which he and the American nation are to give their 
guarantee. 

When the Peace Congress meets, one of the first ques- 
tions to be asked will be — What of Poland ? How it will 
be answered we do not know. If the solution is to be not 
a passing subterfuge to escape from the embarrassments 
of the moment but a permanent establishment, through 
which the relations of states may be based on peace 
and goodwill, not on conquest and aggrandisement and 
oppression, then we know this — all those districts in 
which the population is predominantly Polish must be 
separated from the states to which they now belong. No 
partial or incomplete restoration will be sufficient. Prus- 
sia must give up her Polish provinces; Austria must 
contribute as her share the Polish districts of Galicia, 



12 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE 

and they must be joined with the nucleus of Polish 
lands which have been acquired by the Eussian Em- 
pire. For if there are left lands unredeemed then they 
will surely remain a source of poison; they will be a 
festering sore which will produce inflammation and dis- 
ease, i.e., agitation, conspiracy, intrigue, and war. This 
new Poland must be a self-governing community. It 
will be for them to determine whether the head of their 
state should bear the title of King; in Europe many of 
us still like to have our kings. But our kings must be 
men of the same nation, the same language, the same 
religion as ourselves; they must be not an autocratic 
ruler imposed on us from outside, but the symbol of 
the unity of the nation. Poland must have its own 
parliament, and King and parliament, working in har- 
mony with one another, must give to Poland those laws 
which the Polish nation desires, and must allow the 
free opportunity for that unrestained play of parties and 
of programmes without which no nation can become 
conscious of that which it really desires. 

What place will Poland take in the international sys- 
tem of Europe ? It is too soon to answer this question, 
but it is not too soon to express the hope that the Rus- 
sian nation will be capable eventually of a supreme act 
of generosity — that they will say: This great nation, 
this Holy Russia, with its tens of thousands of square 
miles of contiguous territory, with its millions of in- 
habitants, which comprises half Europe and half Asia, 
united as no other nation is united by an intensity of 
national and religious consciousness, has no need to rule 
over other unwilling dependencies. There may be a 
period of transition, when the Polish nation — weak, di- 
vided by more than a century of living death — is unable 
to stand upon its own feet. But, looking into the future, 
we can see the day when the Polish King, crowned at 
Cracow and ruling at Warsaw, joining under his sceptre 
all the Polish lands which border the banks of the Vis- 
tula and enjoying what has been long denied — access to 
the sea at that great port of Danzig — will take his place, 



BOHEMIA 13 

owing subjection and suzerainty to no man, as the full 
and complete equal of the other rulers of a free and 
independent Europe or instead of a kingdom there may 
be a republic. 

And what hitherto has been but a vague hope and a 
distant aspiration now seems on the verge of fulfilment. 
The Russian autocracy has fallen, and that great event, 
by which freedom is given to the Russian nation, will 
also give freedom to the other races allied to Russia 
under a common despotism. Those generous feelings by 
which the Revolution was brought about, and which it 
will nourish in the future, cannot be confined to Russia 
alone. Already the decree has gone out that the Poles 
shall, by free elections, choose a constituent assembly to 
decide the future of their own race. We may now hope 
that a free Russia, united to a free Europe, will in fact 
undo the wrong committed by Russian despotism in 
alliance with Prussia and Austria. 



Ill 

BOHEMIA 

In my last chapter I spoke of Poland : but Poland is 
not the only kingdom which has been destroyed. Far 
back in the Middle Ages there was a Kingdom of Bo- 
hemia; we know it, and you know it because you will 
have read in your history of England of the blind King 
of Bohemia who fought on the field of Crecy, and whose 
device of three ostrich feathers and motto Ich dien (I 
serve) are still the device and the motto of the Prince 
of Wales. There was a King of Bohemia; there is one 
no longer. There was a Bohemian nation; that too we 
ought to know well, because the Bohemian nation gave 
us the first beginnings of that to which at least Protes- 
tant England and Protestant America owe their present 
faith. The religious history of English Protestantism 
goes back to Wycliffe, whom we call the morning star 



14 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE 

of the Reformation; but Wycliffe himself had received 
the impulse and inspiration from abroad, from the dis- 
tant Bohemian nation. Bohemia had given to England a 
Queen, the wife of Richard II., and with her came the 
knowledge of the new teaching of John Huss. Huss was 
the first of the Protestants, and from the Bohemian na- 
tion sprang the beginnings of the reformed faith. But 
Huss was not only a great religious teacher ; he was also 
a great patriot. The religious movement which he led 
was only part of a great national movement for estab- 
lishing the full freedom of the Czech nation which was 
already being crushed by the superior forces of the Ger- 
mans. It was opposed, less as a religious than as a 
national movement. A century later the German nation 
acclaimed Luther, and has never since then ceased to 
acclaim him as the real founder of modern Germanism. 
For a similar national movement in another race they 
had then, as they have now, no sympathy. And so 
Huss was burned — burned at a great council held on 
German soil under a German Emperor, and a death 
similar to that which came upon their great leader fell 
also upon the Bohemian nation. And more than two 
centuries later, in the great war which was fought on 
the soil of Europe for religious liberty, the first blow 
was directed by the house of Austria against the people 
of Bohemia. They were defeated and crushed, their 
English Queen was driven to be a wanderer on the face 
of the earth, and from that time the name and nation 
of the Bohemians — or, as they called themselves, the 
Czechs — were wiped out, as it seemed for ever, from the 
map of Europe. It was the same house of Austria, the 
same armies, the same generals, who, at the same time, 
tried to crush out the reformed religion and the new 
national spirit of Germany. In Germany they only half 
succeeded. A new Germany has arisen in opposition to 
the house of Austria; but now German Nationalism, 
which should have been inspired with the true spirit of 
liberty, has combined with its ancient enemy, and con- 
spires with it to hold Bohemia in permanent bondage. 



BOHEMIA 15 

But we know how difficult it is to destroy the spirit 
of life. The seeds that had been buried ages ago in 
some forgotten tomb will spring up when brought into 
contact with the sun and the wind and the rain, and 
when the spirit of liberty, which had always been nour- 
ished in England and found its voice in America and in 
France, was transplanted by the Revolution to the East 
of Europe, the spirit of the Bohemian nation, warmed 
and watered by it, sprang again to life. 

For seventy years a great struggle has been taking 
place, little heard of in Western Europe. Many cen- 
turies ago the Bohemians had chosen as their Kings the 
Dukes, who have now become the Emperors, of Austria. 
It was a free offer of a crown ; all they asked for in re- 
turn was the maintenance of their national institutions 
and defence against foreign enemies. The latter was 
given, the former was neglected. Among the titles which 
the Austrian Emperor holds, one of the first is that of 
King of Bohemia, but this title remains a mere name. 
Bohemia was a titular kingdom; they have demanded, 
and demanded in vain, that their king should come to 
Prague and there assume the ancient crown of King 
Wenceslas. This promise was given, but like many 
other promises it was broken. Something indeed the 
nations have succeeded in winning : the struggles of two 
generations had brought it about that the Czech lan- 
guage should be used and recognised officially in the 
government of the country; they had their own Assem- 
bly, which had many rights in internal affairs, but was 
still subject in essential things to the supremacy of 
the Central Parliament and the Imperial offices, which 
were situated at Vienna, and were, as they must be, 
predominantly German in spirit. 

The new Charter of Liberties for Europe cannot neg- 
lect this nation which has struggled so bravely for its 
existence. How terrible is their situation at the present 
moment! In the great war, which has become a war 
between the Teutonic and the Slavonic nations, their 
sympathies cannot but be with those who are of one 



16 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE 

blood and kindred speech. But they have no voice in 
determining their own policy. There is no Bohemian 
Foreign Minister, there is no Bohemian Minister of 
War, there is no Bohemian army; there are only regi- 
ments in the Austro-Hungarian army. They have not 
even the freedom which Russia gives to the Finns, 
who are exempt from service in the army ; they have not 
the liberty of voluntary service which we give to the 
Irish. And so the Czech citizens and peasants have been 
called from their homes, placed under German com- 
manders, and driven forth to fight in a cause which they 
detest, and in every Czech regiment sent to the front 
there are incorporated 40 per cent, of Germans and 
Magyars to watch and control them. The true history of 
this tragedy will perhaps never be known. We do know 
that hundreds of the leaders of the nation are languish- 
ing in jail, many of them under a sentence of death, 
and that others have found safety in flight and are eating 
out their souls in exile. We do know that whole regi- 
ments have passed, or tried to pass, over on the field of 
battle to those whom they cannot look upon as their 
enemies. Of these some have been destroyed, literally 
annihilated ; others, if all that we hear is true, are now 
to be found fighting on the side of the Allies against 
the Germanic Powers. 

Within the Austrian State, among the many others, 
there are two nations — the Magyars or Hungarians, the 
Bohemians or Czechs — about equal in population. The 
one, the Magyars, have been given full, complete, and 
absolute self-government; they have a full part in 
the government of the whole empire ; the common minis- 
ters of war and of foreign affairs are jointly responsi- 
ble to the Austrian and Hungarian Parliaments. Why 
is Bohemia deprived of its equal share in the government 
of an empire in which it has an equal stake ? And why 
is it that two millions of this nation, cut off from all 
association with their more fortunate brethren, are held 
in subjection by the Hungarians? 

The story is told that when the compact was made 



BOHEMIA 17 

between Austrian and Magyar, by which the empire is 
now governed, an Austrian statesman said to his Hun- 
garian colleague: "If you look after your barbarians, 
we will look after ours. ' ' Among these barbarians were 
the Czechs and the Slovacs — the Czechs assigned to the 
Austrian portion of the Empire, the Slovacs to the Hun- 
garians. But the Czechs and Slovacs were no barba- 
rians ; they had a great university at Prague to which in 
the fourteenth century the Germans from the neighbour- 
ing districts had to go in search of learning. With the 
German conquest it was transformed into a German 
University; now it has become once more a centre of 
national thought. In no nation is the number of illiter- 
ates so small; it is less among the Czechs than among 
the German inhabitants of Bohemia.. If Poland is the 
country of Chopin, Bohemia is the motherland of 
Dvorak. If Copernicus, the founder of modern astron- 
omy, was a Pole, Commenius, one of the first men who 
brought a free and independent judgment to bear on the 
problem of education, was a Bohemian. Needless to say 
he, with many thousands of his fellow-countrymen, was 
driven out by the Germans. 

What the future constitution of the kingdom of Bo- 
hemia will be it is still too soon to predict. This will be 
one of the most difficult problems with which the Peace 
Conference will have to deal. Bohemia is unlike Po- 
land in this, that it has and can have no direct access 
to the sea, and without this, as President Wilson has 
pointed out, it is difficult for a nation to enjoy full polit- 
ical and economic independence. The proper place of 
Bohemia sterns to be perhaps rather that of a unit in a 
friendly confederation of nations, associated for mutual 
defence and joined in an economic league. Such a con- 
federation might include the Bohemians, the Hunga- 
rians, the Southern Slavs, and perhaps the Roumanians. 
It is one of the tragedies of history that the House of 
Austria has let slip the opportunity, while there was 
yet time, of establishing this. How different would the 
condition of Europe be if it had been more wisely guided, 



18 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE 

if it had recognised that that great Empire could be 
gradually transformed into a free republic of nations! 
It has preferred the other way. 

The question will then be asked whether it is even 
now too late, whether the constitution of the Empire 
might not so be changed as to provide fully for the 
liberty and self-government of the Bohemians and of 
all the other races within the empire. There are many 
who hoped, even after the war had begun, that some 
solution of this kind might be possible; any such hope 
seems to have been futile — no sign comes from Austria. 
The Emperor has since the war began never ventured 
to summon the Austrian Parliament to Vienna. The con- 
trol of Austrian policy and Austrian armies is falling 
more and more into the hands of the Germans ; there is 
no sign within the Empire of the wideness of view or the 
force of will which alone could preserve it. All that we 
hear from Vienna points in the other direction. The 
latest proposals for an alteration in the Government are 
that the use of the language should be impeded, that 
the common institutions which the Bohemians in fact en- 
joy shall be broken down, and that Bohemia, instead of 
taking its place in the Austrian federation as a single 
or undivided organic whole, shall be broken up into 
administrative districts. These districts will be arranged 
so far as possible as to give the greatest influence to 
the German minority, and those liberties which the 
Czechs have secured by fifty years of perseverance will 
be wiped away. History will not wait ; the patience of 
the subject nations is exhausted; the years which have 
been allowed to elapse cannot be recalled. 



IV 

EOTJMANIA AND THE SOUTHERN SLAVS 

In the Poles and Bohemians we have two ancient na- 
tions which have been destroyed, deprived of their king- 



ROUMANIA AND THE SOUTHERN SLAVS 19 

donis, and made subject to alien rule. Very different is 
the situation of the Roumanians and the Southern Slavs. 
Both these latter peoples had been subjected to the 
Turkish conquest, and for many centuries they were 
obliterated and the whole South-East of Europe became a 
part of the Ottoman Empire. But as there spread the 
decay which rapidly set in as soon as the Moslem con- 
querors had gained possession of Constantinople and 
thereby became inheritors of the vices of the Byzantine 
Empire, their Christian subjects began to stir and cast 
off the chains which bound them. In this they could 
look for assistance to the two great Christian Empires, 
the Austrian and the Russian. The process was very 
long, very slow; rebellion succeeded rebellion and war 
succeeded war, but at last there were established subor- 
dinate principalities, which, while acknowledging the 
suzerainty of the Sultan, were freed from the interfer- 
ence of Turkish officials. From those principalities have 
grown the independent kingdoms of Roumania and Ser- 
bia, both of them in our own days. But things have 
so come about that, unlike Bulgaria, which includes 
within its boundaries practically all those who have 
any claim to Bulgarian nationality, a very large portion 
of the Roumanian and the Serbian race have fallen under 
the power of the Austrian Emperors. The problem here, 
therefore, is one very different from that with which we 
had to deal in the case of Bohemia and of Poland. It is 
not the creation of a new nor the restoration of an an- 
cient kingdom ; it is the extension of an existing king- 
dom to its natural boundaries. The kingdom of Rou- 
mania includes some seven million inhabitants; just be- 
yond the border are three million other Roumanians. 
"When the kingdom of Roumania entered the war, the 
Government and the people were inspired by the one 
hope that they might rejoin to themselves the Rouma- 
nians outside the kingdom, and, by the annexation of 
these districts, form a greater Roumania, a country large 
enough to hold its own among the smaller States to 
which it would be contiguous. 



20 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE 

The case of Serbia is more difficult for this reason, — 
that the Serbians of Serbia are fewer in number than 
those of the same race outside. Moreover, we here find a 
further source of division. The Serbian race is divided 
into two halves, of which one belongs to the Eastern 
Church and uses the Russian alphabet; the other, gen- 
erally called the Croatians, are Roman Catholics and 
use the alphabet common in Western Europe. Again, 
while the majority of the Serbs outside the kingdom are 
inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina — districts which 
have only within the last thirty years been freed from 
Turkish rule — the Croatians have for many hundreds of 
years been united to the Hungarian crown, and under 
Austro-Hungarian dominion have enjoyed what, with all 
its faults, has been an orderly and civilised adminis- 
tration. 

We have, then, two completely different problems : on 
the one hand the union of Serbia with Bosnia and 
Herzegovina, on the other that with Croatia and Dal- 
matia. 

The first is an object which from the beginning of 
the war has been generally recognised as a necessary 
one. Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina form 
a closely connected district, all inhabited by one com- 
mon race, speaking a common language, and Bosnia and 
Herzegovina intervene between Serbia and the seaboard. 
These provinces have been under Austrian government 
for a comparatively short time only, i.e. since 1879, and 
it was not until 1908 that the formal annexation took 
place. It was this annexation which was the origin 
of the present troubles. Until it was completed the 
Serbs had always hoped that in some way or other it 
might be brought about that these provinces would be 
transferred to them; but formal annexation dissipated 
these hopes, with the result that the whole Serbian 
race was driven into the most intense enmity to the 
Austrians. This enmity was increased when, after the 
first Balkan war in 1912, the Serbians hoped to gain 
access to the sea. This access was forbidden solelv ow- 



KOUMANIA AND THE SOUTHERN SLAVS 21 

ing to the will of Austria. Since it became apparent that 
the superior power of Austria was the unchangeable 
enemy of all Serbian aspirations, it was inevitable that 
Serbia must look forward to the first opportunity of 
helping in some blow directed against Austria, the result 
of which would be that her national unity would be 
secured. 

The Croatian problem is infinitely more difficult, and 
this for two reasons. In the first place, we do not 
know what is the view which the Croatians themselves 
take of it. During the war all free expression of opin- 
ion has been impossible. The Croatian regiments have 
fought in the Austrian armies. Have they done so 
willingly, or is there no truth in the reports that large 
bodies of them have passed over to the Russians on the 
field of battle? We know that hundreds of the Croat 
leaders have been thrown into prison or executed and 
Croat papers suppressed — sure signs that the people no 
longer acquiesce in their present government. On the 
one hand they are bound by many ties to the House of 
Hapsburg, on the other they have been occupied for 
thirty years in an acute struggle with their Hungarian 
masters. More advanced in civilisation, they could not 
be asked to accept simple annexation to the kingdom of 
Serbia; rather, a new state would have to be founded 
in which there might be something of a federal union 
between the Serbian monarchy and a restored kingdom 
of Croatia. But there is another even more serious 
question at stake, for we cannot obscure the fact that 
the union of Serbia and Croatia, whatever form it 
might take, would in fact imply the dissolution and de- 
struction of the Austrian Empire. 

This is a problem which the world will have to face. 

I have not spoken of Italy; it is scarcely necessary 
to do so. The Italian claims at least cannot be dis- 
puted; they are only the completion of that process 
which began in 1848, and of which the stages were 1859, 
1866, 1870. After the Congress of Vienna Austria was 
predominant throughout the whole peninsula; Venetia 



22 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE 

and Lombardy were actually governed from Vienna. 
The Austrian control has been broken down. The king- 
dom of Italy has taken its place; Lombardy and Ve- 
netia have ben freed, but the process of liberation was 
not carried out completely. The Austrians still maintain 
their rule over the valleys running down from the Alps 
to the great plain; the Italians justly claim that the 
frontier shall be pushed back to the top of the mountain 
barrier, which is in fact the division between the two 
nationalities, and that the great city of Trieste, Italian 
in population as in origin, shall be incorporated in the 
Italian kingdom. There may indeed be some difficulties 
in determining the precise boundaries on the East and 
the delimitation between the Italian and Slavonic States 
on the Adriatic, but it is not with these smaller matters 
of detail that at present we are occupied. It is suffi- 
cient to clear our minds with regard to the greater 
principles. 

But this is the important thing to note, that the Ital- 
ian problem is the same in essence as that of Roumania 
and that of Serbia. Each one of them implies the 
separation of considerable districts from the Austrian 
Empire as at present constituted, and the total trans- 
ference of territory, if it were brought about, would 
be so great as to destroy the secular position which 
Austria has held in Europe as one of the Great Powers 
by which international relations were determined. 



V 

SOUTH SLAVS AND CENTRAL EUROPE 

We can all see that the real problem which will be 
presented to the world when the Peace Congress meets 
is not so much what we may call the German problem, 
as the Austrian and the Turkish. Not the German prob- 
lem, because, whatever the result of the war may be, 
we can predict this, — that Germany will remain after the 



SOUTH SLAVS AND CENTRAL EUROPE 23 

war a sovereign, independent, undivided State, shorn it 
may be of one or two districts on the Eastern and the 
Western frontiers, the inhabitants of which have re- 
fused to consider themselves as German, but in its es- 
sential features the Germany which we have known in 
the past. There may be, there inevitably will be, pro- 
found changes in the internal government of the coun- 
try, but these will not be a matter of international ar- 
rangement. Whether Germany will continue to be gov- 
erned as now, whether the power of the Empire will be 
diminished, whether there will be changes in the rela- 
tions of Prussia to the other Federal States, whether 
even (I do not think this will be the case) the monarchi- 
cal institutions will be overthrown and a German Re- 
public established — all these are matters for the German 
nation itself to determine. Quite otherwise is it with 
Austria and with Turkey ; for, let us recognise it frankly 
and fully, the peace terms of the Allies imply a diminu- 
tion of territory so great as to amount to a disintegra- 
tion and dissolution of these two Empires. 

This has been seized on by German writers who do not 
cease to protest against the extravagant terms suggested 
by the Allies. They do not cease at the same time to 
protest against proposals for the annihilation of Ger- 
many, although such proposals have not and will not 
be made ; but they have some justification for speaking 
of the annihilation of Austria and of Turkey. Of Tur- 
key I do not propose on this occasion to speak, and in- 
deed what need is there to do so? In America at least 
no voice surely would be heard in defence of an em- 
pire which since the time of its establishment has not 
made a single contribution, however small, to the civili- 
sation and progress of the world ; their government has 
been an alternation between sloth, indifference, sensual- 
ity, and paroxysms of destruction and massacre. But 
Austria is different. With all her faults, Austria has 
been for 300 years one of the greatest, proudest and 
most dignified states in the commonwealth of Christen- 
dom, and it is the government seat at Vienna which has 



24 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE 

been the source of order and authority through all the 
Valley of the Danube. 

The dissolution of Austria, the annihilation of the 
empire ! Let us look at these expressions from another 
point of view. Destruction is only legitimate when it 
is the condition of a new creation; we cut down a great 
forest tree only to give freedom of growth, air, light, 
and sunshine to the fruit-growing plants which will oc- 
cupy the ground that it leaves free. 

The overthrow of the Empire ! Let us regard this not 
from the point of view of the Government, the State, the 
Army, the Government offices, but from the point of 
view of the men who live under their control and pro- 
tection. Do not matters then take on a very different 
aspect ? 

If we read any typical German discussion as to the 
condition of affairs which they hope to secure at the end 
of the war we shall always find placed in the front rank 
the conception that Eastern Europe must be so arranged 
as to leave open a channel of communication, a corridor, 
a road between Central Europe and the sea. They, 
thinking purely as Germans, wish to have access to the 
East for ''exploitation" and the carrying out of their 
grandiose schemes of conquest and civilisation. For 
them, therefore, the Balkans, the peoples, races, and dis- 
tricts which intervene between the lands of German 
speech and the derelict countries which have been ruined 
by the Turks, take the form merely of so many miles 
of land intervening between them and the objects of 
their ambition. For the German these people have no 
essential right of existence ; all the problems which arise 
in regard to them are reduced to whether or not they 
will make easy the line of communication between Ger- 
many and Asia. 

"When we have said this we have said all that need 
be said. German claims, as Germans themselves make 
them, are overthrown in the very formula in which they 
are conveyed, for they imply this — that there are cer- 
tain races the greatness and prosperity of which is an 



SOUTH SLAVS AND CENTRAL EUROPE 25 

end in itself, and others which only exist for the benefit 
of the more favoured. The establishment of a great 
kingdom of Serbia, of a powerful and extended Rou- 
mania, would be inconvenient to Germany, because they 
would interpose a barrier between Germany and other 
parts of the world. Therefore these States must remain 
small, helpless, dependent for political and commercial 
prosperity upon the more powerful German nation. 

But the Allies say, and all history will endorse what 
they say, that this is a wrong way to envisage the prob- 
lem. We have not to consider whether the existence of 
a great Serbia is or is not convenient to Germany — 
that is a matter which is completely unimportant; the 
activity of every nation is necessarily conditioned by its 
geographical situation. It has to make the best of the 
world in which it finds itself. Spain is cut off from 
access to the rest of Europe by the interposition of 
France ; this was no reason why, as in fact at one time 
took place, the Spaniards should establish control over 
Italy, Western Germany, and the Netherlands, and en- 
circle France in a ring of iron. Sweden, shut up in 
her own peninsula, is cut off from Southern Europe 
by the great bulk of Germany ; that is no reason why, as 
once happened, the Swedes should secure for themselves 
a pied a terre in Continental Europe at the expense of 
the Germans. This law is fundamental ; it is under this 
law that England has for over 300 years consistently 
refused, even though she might easily have acted other- 
wise, to undertake the government of any part of the 
Continent of Europe. It is under this law that Austria 
has rightly been driven from the Italian Peninsula and 
that France has been confined to her natural frontiers. 
In the modern world Germany, and Germany alone, 
claims that it shall be violated for her sole benefit, and 
that these Slavonic States should be condemned to a 
position of perpetual servitude for the benefit of Ger- 
man trade. 

The real problem then is, do the Serbs, whether of the 
Kingdom or the neighbouring Austrian provinces, exist 



26 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE 

for their own sake? Is their government to be a thing 
to be tried, as is the government of other countries, en- 
tirely in reference to the people themselves, or is it to 
be judged in reference to its effect upon Germany ? Are 
Serbia, Bulgaria, and Roumania to be looked upon 
merely as a road and corridor between Central Europe 
and the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, the iEgean? To 
this question there can be but one answer, — at least in 
America, for every American who accepts the German 
point of view is thereby guilty of treachery to the very 
principles on which his own state has been established. 

We must then, for the moment, put away from our 
minds the problem as it appears to those who live at 
Vienna and at Berlin, and consider it purely from the 
point of view of the inhabitants of Belgrade, Serajevo 
and Agram. And as soon as we have done so, how 
simple it all becomes! Here is a great country, ex- 
tending from Monastir to Ragusa and Cattaro; it is 
inhabited by some fifteen millions of people; from one 
end to the other there is no difference of language as 
great as that which exisits between Devonshire and 
Midlothian; throughout it all men can understand one 
another ; there is no essential difference of rank or class, 
of nobles or of peasants ; the people have the same tradi- 
tional institutions throughout ; their culture is based on 
the existence of the village community and the undivi- 
ded family, a fact which separates the Slavs from the 
races of Western Europe; and, if there be a difference 
of religion — for some are Catholic and some are Ortho- 
dox — it is not greater than that which exists between 
England and Scotland and Ireland. Nowhere on the 
face of the world is there a country of which it may be 
said so definitely that all its people should have a com- 
mon government, and a government carried on by men 
of their own race and in their own language. 



AUSTRIA 27 

VI 

AUSTRIA 

I write with no hostility to Austria ; there is no rea- 
son why any Englishman should feel any ill-will towards 
a State which has again and again been an ally of Great 
Britain in the wars of the past, and which has, perhaps 
alone of all Continental countries, never entered into 
rivalry with her. Austria is the one country of which 
it may be said that it never has had, in the past, and, 
so far as we can see, will not in the future have any 
objects of ambition which would compete with British 
interests. The part which Austria has played in the past 
has been a great one, and in many ways an honourable 
and beneficent. For 200 years she was the bulwark 
of Europe against the Turks, and, notwithstanding all 
the faults of her internal administration, she has suc- 
ceeded in maintaining the essentials of civilised govern- 
ment and civilised life among the diverse populations 
over whom she has ruled. This has been no easy task. 
Among the mountains of the Carpathians and on the 
plains of the Middle Danube, where Europe verges upon 
Asia, men of different races, languages, and religions 
live inextricably mingled together — Eoumanian and 
Magyar, German and Ruthenian, Moslem and Jew and 
Slovenian. Here have been slumbering the passions of 
religious and racial animosity, and were the strong arm 
of the Central Government withdrawn, then, as was in 
fact seen during the Revolution of 1848, tumults and 
civil war would arise which would be fought out on the 
methods with which we have become familiar in Mace- 
donia. The establishment of the strong Austrian Gov- 
ernment was perhaps an essential stage during the 
period of transition from Turkish rule to national inde- 
pendence, but it was only a period of transition and it 
cannot be perpetuated. It could perhaps have con- 



28 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE 

tinued, but on one condition alone, that the Government 
at Vienna should have realised that the Empire must 
be transformed into a federation of free, nations, such as 
Switzerland in fact is, in which equal rights would 
have been given to all. They have chosen the other path. 
A privileged position has been granted the Germans 
and the Magyars; these two races, either of whom is a 
comparatively small minority of the whole, have claimed 
a privileged position. In order to support and main- 
tain this they have during the last generation learned to 
depend in international policy upon the German Empire, 
so that the great strength, military and economic, of 
Germany has in fact been used to maintain a form of 
government in Austria and in Hungary which, if the 
Empire had stood alone in the world, would have col- 
lapsed long ago. The result of this has been that Aus- 
tria has steadily declined from the great and inde- 
pendent European position which it once occupied — it 
has become affiliated to Germany. Attempts have been 
made now and again to reassert its freedom of move- 
ment; they have always failed, and Austria has come to 
heel. It had become a ''brilliant second" to Germany. 
After the war this process w r ould inevitably continue 
further ; closer bonds of union, commercial and military, 
would be established, and even though Germany were 
defeated in the war she would emerge stronger than ever, 
because the authority which emanates from Berlin would 
in fact rule as far as the Adriatic. There was room in 
Europe for an independent Austria; there is no place 
for an Austria which has become a junior partner in 
the great firm of Central Europe. 

During the war we have looked to see if there were 
any sign of a rejuvenation of Austria; there is none. 
Hungary remains as it was before — virile, warlike, ruth- 
less — but the Austrian armies are fighting under Ger- 
man generals; it is the support of Germany alone by 
which the resistance of the Empire is still bolstered up ; 
the Government at Vienna remains indolent, corrupt, 
wanting in initiative, blind to the great problems of 



AUSTRIA 29 

the future. We look to Austria for some response and 
we get none. The old Austria has in fact disappeared. 

But if this old independent Austria has gone, then it is 
essential that there should be built up in its place new 
States large enough to be self-dependent. This can 
only to be done by creating a large South Slavonic State 
which would intervene between Germany on the one 
side, the Adriatic and the ^Egean on the other. This, en- 
tering as we may hope into some federal union,' not 
only with Roumania but also with Hungary and Bul- 
garia, will form a solid block which will for the first 
time give to the inhabitants of these regions that polit- 
ical power, military and commercial strength, which, 
owing to the misfortunes of their history, they have 
been for so long denied. 

Do not let us be foolishly optimistic. Let us not 
ignore the profound difficulties which confront Europe 
in the settlement of these great problems. "Whatever the 
issue of the war may be, it is no easy task to destroy and 
to create States, to establish a centre of government 
where none has existed before, to create order out of 
chaos, to build up armies and courts of justice and 
administrative departments and all the paraphernalia of 
government, and to ensure that the orders which they 
issue shall be obeyed and that the administration which 
they create shall be effective. If this is difficult at any 
time, much more so will it be when these countries have 
been for three years exposed to the worst ravages of war- 
fare and the towns and villages are lying in ruins, when 
the population is decimated by disease and starvation, 
when all the habits of civilised life have ceased. 

It is easy enough to talk of creating a Polish State, 
a Bohemian State, and a great South Slav State, but 
long and difficult will be the course that has to be run 
before it has been achieved in practice. It may well be 
that we find that the full achievement is indeed at this 
time impossible. We cannot at one stroke completely 
solve problems which are inherited from centuries of 
aggression and misgovernment. It will indeed take gen- 



30 THE DEAD LANDS OF EUROPE 

erations to undo the mistakes of the past and the disas- 
ters of the present. But even if we recognise this, we 
will also recognise that it makes all the difference 
whether we start in the right or in the wrong direction. 
There are certain great principles of government which 
never can cease to be true. If we grasp them firmly 
and guide our course by them every step will lead in 
the right direction. We can take an example from the 
past. At the Congress of Vienna one hundred years 
ago Europe was confronted by a similar situation ; then 
it chose the wrong course. It neglected the sound and 
eternal principles of statesmanship ; it ignored the rights 
of the peoples, the aspirations of the nations, and cared 
only for the rulers and the States. What was the result ? 
It has taken a hundred years of revolution and warfare 
to undo what was then done and to set Europe once 
more upon the right course. Belgium, Germany, Italy — 
in each of these countries the settlement of Vienna has 
been overthrown, and it was right that it should be 
overthrown. But how much did the effort cost ! What 
was the loss to Europe of the wasted years before the 
effort was successful ! Now we have to do not with the 
Western but the Eastern lands of Europe ; now we have 
the same problem before us. How are we going to ap- 
proach it? Are we to start from the kings and the 
rulers of the existing States, the kingdom of Prussia, 
the Russian Czardom, the Austrian Empire? These in- 
deed are the entities of which diplomacy in the past has 
taken note. For a hundred years it has been the con- 
stant cry of all who have called themselves Liberal that 
diplomacy should recognise not rulers but peoples, and 
this means that the new settlement of Europe should 
ask itself, not how much territory has to be awarded to 
Germany, to Russia, to Austria, but how are the Poles, 
the Bohemians, the Croatians, the Roumanians to be 
governed ? In truth the terms of the Allies, in that they 
have taken note of this, will always form one of the 
greatest landmarks in European history. We need not 
therefore be discouraged if our new Poland, our new 

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AUSTRIA 31 

Bohemia, our new South Slavia does not, either in the 
nature of its institutions or in the delimitation of ter- 
ritory, precisely meet the demands of every idealist. It 
would be sufficient if we laid the foundation-stones on 
which future generations will build. The world will not 
cease to progress ; all that matters is that it should move 
in the right direction. It is for us to give the direction. 



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